Crime Traveller: Chemical Vore Part 3
by agrader
Summary: Nicky shrinks to tiny size and is sent back in time by Holly Turner, where her past self finds him.


CHAPTER BEGIN NOTES: The story continues from PARTRIDGE FAMILY: CHEMICAL VORE PART 2.

Nicky was at his desk. Holly Turner was in her office. Kate Grisham was out in the field on a case with Morris and Jeff Slade. To his surprise, Nicky heard Holly begin to talk to someone. He looked at his phone set, which showed the lines of all the other staff. None of them were active. There was no red light. Holly Turner was not on the phone to anyone. So who could she be talking to?

Nicky was aware that Morris had suspected Jeff Slade and Holly Turner of being involved with an organisation of informants called 'The Machine'. Yet Grisham had dismissed the theory and thought Morris to be completely off the track. Had Holly somehow invented some communication device other than the telephone, and used it to keep in touch with some secret informants? Was this the secret of Jeff Slade's recent spate of successfully solved cases?

Nicky was curious. He took out another tool, which had been given to him by Holly. It resembled a stethoscope, but would be used for a slightly different purpose. Nicky went over to the wall outside Holly's office, put the device to the wall and listened through the headset.

"You won't get away," he heard Holly say, "and you won't get your size back in time either."

What on earth was she talking about, and to whom? Nicky had no idea. He could think of no suitable excuse to knock on her door, but he made up his mind about one thing. He would follow her after work at the end of the day, and see where she went, and what she got up to.

As the day came to an end, he left the office first, and made ready in his car to keep an eye on Holly's departure. He followed her car, and used his binoculars when she parked in a scenic spot. He saw her reach into her handbag, which was on the passenger seat, take out some small item of food and hold it for a while and then put it into her mouth. She seemed to have been talking to herself before she put the food into her mouth. Holly finished what was presumably a snack and then began driving again.

She went home as expected. He let her park, and then went into the building behind her. He waited until she'd gone into her flat, and then walked along the hallway. Suddenly a drifting cloud of shrinking mist reduced him to a height of one and a half inches.

"Now I've got the perfect excuse to call on her unannounced," he thought.

He slipped under her door and found himself in a room that looked like a science laboratory. He walked across it and into the next room, where he saw Holly.

"Nicky …" she said.

She didn't seem surprised at his tiny size.

"Don't ask me how I got like this," said Nicky, "I knew that you were the one to come to for help. I need a scientist to figure this one out."

"I don't know anything about shrinking," she said, "But I do know about time travel. I've invented a machine which can take you back. Would you like to try it?"

"Maybe it will take me back to before I shrank and prevent it," thought Nicky and agreed.

He had no idea of the Chronology Protection Hypothesis, which was an inviolate law of any time travel made possible by Holly's and Stephen Marlowe's time machines. Some time machines would allow the past to be changed. However, these ones didn't, and Marlowe's had been destroyed anyway.

Holly explained the workings of the machine and then told Nicky that the machine would take him back to 7:30am that morning.

"When you get there, just go under the door again and out into the hall. You can live the same day in the past, as long as you don't meet your other self."

"You mean the one that's full sized, the me of earlier today?" asked Nicky.

"Exactly," said Holly, "I won't give you a counter clock, because you won't be able to wear it at that size. Besides, I don't need you back by this time in your case."

She positioned Nicky beside the switch, and gave him a small doll sized parachute that she had been experimenting with.

"I'll have to leave the room, so I don't get taken back in time too. I'll go into my kitchen. You throw the switch and then parachute down to the floor," said Holly.

Nicky watched her leave, and then used all his strength to activate the time machine. He saw a vertical lighting effect on the walls, or at least that was what it looked like. It was amazing to have been affected by both an unknown size changing factor and a time machine in one day.

When the machine had stopped, he put on the parachute, jumped slowly to the floor, and then went out under the door. He was not in the hallway for long, when he saw Holly walking along the hallway.

"Hello Holly! It worked!" he called up at her.

"Nicky? What worked?" she asked.

It was odd. When she had seen him for the first time, she had not seemed surprised. Now she did. Then Nicky understood. The time travel had had a circular effect. He was now back at 7:35 that morning. This slightly younger Holly was seeing him for the first time. The Holly who had found him in her flat and used the time machine on him had in fact remembered this event and hence hadn't been surprised.

"I get it," said Nicky, "Your future self tonight found me tiny and put me in a time machine room and sent me back to now. She said something about a clock, and that I wouldn't need to get back by tonight. I shrank for no apparent reason, and asked her to help me."

"Oh the loop of infinity," she said, "What she meant was that the time traveller needs to get back to the machine at the exact time that he first travelled back from, after reliving the time period of the past again. Otherwise, he gets caught in the loop of infinity and lives the same period over and over again."

"So why wouldn't I need to get back?"

"Because my future self would have known I didn't want you to," said Holly, "I'm going to let you live the same day over and over with me …. That is what you wanted, isn't it Nicky? How else could I have played on your feelings to catch you off guard the time I had to get out of that cell, when I was suspected of murdering my aunt? That was my time travelling self who kneed you in the groin, by the way."

"I … would like it, but the same day? How?"

"What time did you travel from?"

"Around 6:30pm tonight," said Nicky.

"Well you'll live this day up until then and then you'll be drawn back to whenever you just arrived."

"7:30."

"You're telling me now that you got here at 7:30. I'll remember that tonight when I send you back," she said, "To you that's already happened."

"So that's how she knew the time," said Nicky.

"Well I'd better take you with me, before anyone sees you," said Holly.

She picked him up and put him into her handbag, and drove him to the office.

"Hi Holly. Kate's left with Morris and Slade. Big armed robbery job to solve."

It was his own voice! From within her handbag, Nicky heard his past self talking to Holly.

"I'll just get on with some work in my office," said Holly to the incumbent Nicky.

Soon she sat at her desk and unzipped her handbag and took him out and kissed him.

"Was that nice?"

"Yes it was!"

"Enjoy it while you can. Before your time in the past runs out, I'm going to eat you all up."

"What?"

"It won't be so bad. I'll swallow you whole."

She smiled down at him.

"Please let me go, Holly!"

"You won't get away, and you won't get your size back in time either."

Nicky was surprised again. They were the exact words that he heard with the listening device outside her office before. In fact, his past self was hearing them now, as she said them. Holly left her bag unzipped, so that he could look up at her pretty face for the rest of the day while she worked. He even watched her take out her lunch and eat that, knowing that she had the same thing in mind for him.

Several times she kissed him that afternoon. At one point she even locked her office door and lay down on the carpet and cuddled him to her face. At the end of the day, she took him to her car and began driving. Then Nicky made the final connection. He knew that his past self was following her and recalled what he had seen.

"The piece of food she took from her bag and ate!" he thought, "It must have been me! Now it will be me."

Holly stopped the car, took him from her bag and spoke.

"It's been nice working with you, Nicky," she said, "And thanks for a lovely day."

Then she put him into her mouth, and slowly swallowed him.

He found himself lying in her stomach for a little while, and then suddenly he was back in the hallway. Yet he could not remember anything that he had done in the past, only the events of the day from his original perspective, up until he had been shrunken and sent back in time. He would now relive the entire experience, unaware that he had already lived it once. It would be an infinity of repeated, forgotten and repeated experience, all occurring within one day.

CHAPTER END NOTES: The story continues in DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES: CHEMICAL VORE PART 4.


End file.
